The Hidden Costs of Professional Cuddling: Is Platonic Touch a Viable Career?

Professional cuddling (also known as cuddle therapy, touch therapy, or professional snuggling) is a real occupation.

There aren’t any “official” stats on how many practitioners there are, but in a 2020 Business Insider article, Cuddlist, one of the primary training and certification platforms, reported that they’d trained over 1,600 individuals and employed hundreds of active practitioners across various regions.1

Samantha Hess launched Cuddle Up To Me in Portland, Oregon after she saw a man holding a sign offering hugs for two dollars. What started as a $100 mobile house-call service eventually grew into a real business with a 4,000-square-foot retail storefront, trained employees, and a custom buildout.

By the time Hess closed her doors in 2022 to figure out her next steps, she had completed over 4,500 one-on-one session hours, appeared in hundreds of media interviews, and developed a 71-lesson certification program for aspiring cuddlers.

When I contacted her, she gave me access to that course, and I was immediately struck by the difference between the internet’s perception of the job and the reality of running it.

Professional cuddling: perception versus reality

To address the obvious question, although Cenat’s audience encouraged him to “turn off the stream and hit that,” professional cuddling is strictly platonic.

This is a service where people pay a practitioner for fully clothed, nonsexual physical touch and emotional companionship.

If you become a cuddler, then depending on you and your client’s comfort levels, you can spoon, lie side by side, or even have them lie back against you in a seated position. Conversation is usually okay, too, although it’s worth remembering that you’re not there as a licensed therapist or mental health professional—something that matters, as cuddling can often lead to people opening up emotionally.

Some professional cuddlers also offer group sessions, and sometimes even virtual sessions via video call in situations where physical touch isn’t possible.

Many professional cuddlers undergo training before starting

Training often involves education on waivers, consent protocols, communication, boundary-setting, and therapeutic holding positions. These are all geared toward ensuring a safe and fulfilling experience for you and your clients.

Consider just a few of the rules Hess’s course taught me how to communicate to my (completely hypothetical) clients:

• The dress code: Hess recommends requiring a minimum of a tank top and workout shorts that go below the fingertips for both parties. No undergarments should be visible.
• The tap-out: If either party feels uncomfortable, they can “tap out” with two quick taps to any appropriate area, immediately stopping all action.
• No kissing: Not even pecks on the cheek or the top of the head are allowed.
• No tickling: This is strictly prohibited. If it happens accidentally, it must stop immediately.
• Restricted areas: Touch with hands is only allowed outside of swimsuit areas, and there’s no reaching beneath clothes to feel the skin underneath.

The rules are designed to minimize gray areas. It’s consent-driven nonsexual intimacy. According to Hess, serious practitioners wield pens and waivers “like mighty swords.”

At her peak in 2022, Hess was billing roughly 80 session hours a month at $100 an hour, but hitting that $8,000-a-month gross revenue mark didn’t happen overnight.

“That was 10 years and more than 400 media appearances in,” she admitted.

She told me that every hour she earned money took her at least 15 minutes of admin time once she got established, and that this ratio is much steeper for newcomers to the industry. “For most folks who are self-employed, it’s going to take likely one to five hours of admin time for each paid hour to get established.”

Consider all the time you’ll spend doing marketing, conducting pre-session interviews with clients, and doing laundry (if you’re running your own establishment). It adds up.

When Hess employed a team of professional cuddlers, those who had completed their training had an introductory rate of $60, which offered clients lower-cost options with less experienced cuddlers. “Once they completed 100 hours of paid sessions, we increased their rate to $80 per hour,” Hess said, “and after 300 hours, it went up to $100 per hour.”

Hess left the industry in 2022, but my research indicated that the core business model hasn’t changed drastically since then.

As a recent example of how profitable the industry remains, one 2026 New York Post story (later reported on by VICE) detailed the case of a professional cuddler who left a stressful teaching position in 2017 and now earns between $60,000 and $100,000 a year, usually working for just three hours a day.2

What’s a good hourly rate?

When it comes to setting rates, Hess warned against the beginner’s trap of undercharging. Today, the industry standard is around $80 an hour, she said.

She pointed to the “Girl Scout” approach to pricing. “If a random stranger came up to you on the street and offered you a cookie in cling wrap for $1, how would you feel about buying that cookie?” she said. “But if a Girl Scout offers you cookies, you feel comfortable understanding the motivation and value.”

“If the standard is $80 per hour, and you’re charging $60, that automatically devalues you in a potential client’s eyes. Charge at least the average rate, and people will automatically believe in your value.”

Jean Franzblau, who’s been in the industry since 2014 and founded The Cuddle Sanctuary, told UCLA in 2026 that she offers a sliding scale starting at $150 for 60 minutes. She mentioned training and experience as factors that can affect pricing, along with whether you’re hosting or traveling to see the client.3

I found other professional cuddlers on online forums like Reddit claiming to be making more than $100 per hour. They pointed to similar pricing considerations as Franzblau’s, like traveling and hosting. For example, some said they charge more if the commute to a client’s house is over an hour, or if they’re hosting the session at a hotel.

One Redditor noted that charging lower prices might attract the type of client you don’t want. The upshot is that both for your bottom line and your safety, you should charge at least the current industry standard rate.

Looks matter in professional cuddling, too

When I dug into the business side of things, one reality struck me as unfortunate. Like any profession in the service industry, your looks might play a big role in how successful you’ll be.

While I’d like to think an industry built on empathy would be blind to physical appearance, that isn’t the case.

“It totally sucks, and I’m not saying supermodel types will do best,” Hess said, “but ‘girl-next-door’ vibes will absolutely have an easier time getting clients than someone who is too far to either end of the scale.”

Who actually hires professional cuddlers?

Given the emphasis on looks, I—and I bet you, too—assumed the vast majority of clients seeking this service would be lonely men, but Hess dispelled that notion.

“My clients are men, women, old, young … it runs the gamut,” Hess wrote in an old Q&A session on Reddit. “Some of my clients are obese, some have severe disabilities or diseases, some have lost a loved one, some are just lonely. There doesn’t seem to be any specific group that doesn’t seek out this type of service.”

For those looking to enter the industry, the financial barrier to entry can range from almost nothing to tens of thousands of dollars. You’ll incur especially high costs if you hire a lawyer to determine the legality of the business in your area.

“When I started as an outbound service, I think it really only cost me about $100 to get started—not counting all my time,” Hess said. “I started with a website, business cards, flyers, and no insurance at all.” (In 2013, the only insurance quote she could find for the novel business was a staggering $10,000 a month.)

Scaling up changed the math. At the peak of her brick-and-mortar operations, Hess was spending roughly $3,400 a month on rent, alongside a monthly payroll of $2,700, plus worker’s comp, marketing, and scheduling software. She spent $500 outfitting each individual cuddle bed with frames, mattresses, pillows, and quilts, and $3,000 for studio furniture.

“We also put $2,000 into gift shop merchandise, paid $800 for a custom mural,” she added. “Paint and decorations ran about $500.”

She sent me a breakdown of the average monthly expenses from her second location. Looking at it, I realized just how quickly the costs of running a legitimate cuddling studio can add up:

Today, she advises newcomers to keep things simple but legally sound by establishing an LLC to protect your personal assets, using verified waivers from established certification companies, and using AI to research local zoning and business laws.

Of course, you’ll want to independently double-check anything the AI tells you, as the technology sometimes yields incorrect info while asserting it as fact.

My biggest concern when looking into this profession was physical safety and sexual boundary-crossing. According to Hess, blatant boundary-pushing was rare in her operation, largely due to the strict security measures she took beforehand, like client vetting and signing legally binding waivers.

More common were requests that technically followed the rules but gave her pause, like clients requesting that either she or they wear specific kinds of clothing during a session. Some of these requests, she admitted, while technically following the rules, may give you what she calls “the ick.”

But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re coming from a bad place.

“Oftentimes, oddly specific requests are associated with a past trauma that someone is trying to overcome or cope with,” Hess said.

When clients did cross a line—like offering $500 to make out on her couch—she relied on a blunt, non-judgmental deflection technique.

“I’d say, ‘Thank you for asking. That’s against the rules, so I’m a no to that, but I’d be happy to spend the time in your session setting up an online dating profile or seeking.com profile with you.'”

Hess believes that there’s a yes in the no. When shutting down clients, she’d point them instead towards online dating, local platonic touch groups, volunteer opportunities, therapists, or sites that cater to niche romantic or sexual interests, like fetlife.com or seekingarrangement.com.

Ultimately, Hess left the profession behind due to the accumulated weight of carrying other people’s trauma, not because of a lack of financial viability or because of inappropriate clients.

After speaking with her, it became apparent to me that as a cuddler, even without explicitly advertising it, you are acting as an unofficial therapist half the time.

Professional cuddling can be very fulfilling and financially rewarding work, but since cuddlers generally aren’t mandatory reporters, clients frequently confess things that they’ve never told their talk therapists.

“It turns out, physically holding people who tell you the worst things they’ve ever done, or had done to them, for a decade is a lot,” Hess said. She spent a lot of time working with people who had experienced physical abuse and emotional trauma, as well as people with serious illnesses and disabilities.

It’s important to understand your limit

During the pandemic lockdown, separated from her clients, Hess began reading psychology books.

She stumbled upon the concept of the “Fawn Complex,” a trauma response rooted in extreme people-pleasing. “I had spent so much time overcoming my own trauma from growing up with an abusive father, alcoholic mother, and a sexual abuse experience during an annual exam by a doctor, that holding space not just for bodies but for whole humans mattered so much to me.”

Hess realized her hyper-vigilance and ability to instantly love and read strangers was a trauma response of her own. “I love everyone. Instantly. As soon as I know you exist. It’s not earned. Except myself.”

She was taking care of her body—dry brushing, meditating, eating well, going for walks—but only so she could be a better tool for her clients rather than for herself.

“I learned I needed to pull away from my deeply established neural pathways of people-pleasing if I was ever going to learn how to matter,” she told me. “It’s a beautiful gift that came at the expense of feeling like a persona when there was no room for me to be a person.”

Curious about how the gig has evolved since Hess stepped away in 2022, I dug into industry’s recent developments. It turns out that professional cuddling has continued to legitimize and expand.

A major development for US-based practitioners has been the formation of the Society of Cuddle Professionals (SofCP) in 2025.

Initiatives like these are attempting to standardize the industry’s best practices, promote public education about it, and eventually create coordinated business resources (such as liability and health insurance alternatives) tailored specifically to touch-based therapies.4

The marketplace for booking has diversified, too. Older directories have been joined by newer software and app-based startups like Floffy.

These platforms aim to give providers better control over safety features, direct payments, and client privacy without heavy per-session commissions. (Since some of these apps are newer and haven’t been as widely vetted yet, I’d advise proceeding with caution.)

It’s clear that the field will continue to professionalize as time goes on, which I’m sure will go a long way in changing public and media perception of it.

Four years after closing her business, Hess is still undoing the neural “spaghetti” of prioritizing everyone else’s safety and feelings over her own, but she doesn’t regret her time in the industry.

For those looking to make a living in the platonic touch industry today, she advises that you master the psychological survival skill of compartmentalization.

“When you hold people and listen to their stories, it can be really hard to not want to help,” she warned. “Our job isn’t to help. It’s to hold. Hold space. Hold bodies. Hold stories. It’s not to fix. It’s not to be responsible for their outcomes.”

If my deep dive into this industry taught me anything, it’s that this distinction may be harder to maintain than it sounds.

Hess said she maintained strict boundaries around the relationship itself. “I never asked anyone to book [another] session after a session,” she said. “I never accepted tips. I was pretty successful at not becoming people’s emergency contacts.”

Despite that, the weight became too much. A client can leave the room, but what they told you won’t necessarily leave with them. Learning when to care deeply and when to let go is part of the job, too.

Where do you start?

If you’re still interested in professional cuddling after reading all of that, it’s best to start with your boundaries rather than your business plan.

Think carefully about what you’re comfortable allowing, learn the fundamentals of platonic touch, and decide whether you want to work independently or through an agency, which may offer training to get you started.

Certification programs can help new practitioners understand consent, boundaries, client screening, and the practicalities of setting up a business. In addition to Samantha Hess’s program, you can look into ones offered by Keeley Shoup and Tangé Wellness.

From there, the work is similar to what you’d do when setting up any business. Figure out your local legal requirements and get appropriate insurance. Then, set your rates, create your client forms, and build your booking system.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, work out how you’ll protect your own time and energy, because as Hess learned, the hardest part of professional cuddling may not actually be learning how to physically hold someone else.

“Care with everything you’ve got,” Hess said. “And leave it in the session room, because you have to matter, too.”